


that's retail baby

by katrinawritesthings



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25362790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: so like picture this youre Minho and you have to get a job right out of high school so you pick up a shitty grocery store night shift gig and your first night there you see another employee that has red eyes and that keeps disappearing and giving you chills and logically you know that he’s just a dude but emotionally you are unsettledmaybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s demonic possession ; )
Relationships: Choi Minho/Lee Taemin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	that's retail baby

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday Boy Deserves Little A Unsettling Minho Greatly. As a treat

This isn’t so bad, Minho thinks. The whole grocery store night shift gig. He’s sure that he’ll change his mind when it’s been more than one day, or when he has to talk to a customer. Whichever one comes first. But as it is right now, night one, hour 4, it’s not that bad. He’s almost made $60 and all he’s doing is bringing out extra stock on a big push cart and refilling all of the shelves around the store. That’s almost one video game and his back only hurts a little bit.

It’s incredibly stressful already to be pretending that this isn’t an awful job with peanuts for pay, but he’s doing a pretty good job at that too, he thinks. Not too shabby for a kid that recently graduated high school and then was made to get a job by his parents immediately after. Not too shabby that he doesn’t want to quit yet. 

Right now, he’s in the dairy section, which is pretty cool because he gets to be behind the big refrigerators in the secret dark employee area. It’s not as cool as he always thought it would be, but it’s still pretty cool and he’s taking what he can get. He’s also taking little bottles of vanilla milk off of his cart two at a time and slipping them into place in one of the refrigerators.

It’s as he’s doing this that he senses a presence behind him; or, not really a presence. Just a sharp chill that runs down his spine and makes him shiver violently for a second. Weird.

And then footsteps. looking over his shoulder, he sees another employee shuffling towards him in the small space. Oh. He tries his best to smile, to appear bright and friendly and happy to be a part of the team. That’s what he’s supposed to do, he guesses. That’s what his training video said he should strive to be like. This employee apparently didn’t watch the same video, or they’ve already stopped caring, because they’re yawning and rubbing one eye with their palm as they slump up to him.

“Hey, ‘scuse me?” they grumble. “I gotta get to the yogurts.”

“Oh, sure–” Minho starts, stepping back, and then he stops, in his tracks, frozen, when they look up and flick their honey blond bangs out of their face and he sees their eyes.

Their red, red, red eyes. All red– no, just no white. They have black pupils, dark brown irises, but what should be the whites of their eyes are just. Red. A dark, solid, blood red.

“Thanks,” they say, pushing past him. The brush of their body against his sends another, infinitely more sinister chill down Minho’s spine as he watches them walk away, wide-eyed and breathless, until they disappear into the darkness of the store room. 

After that, he gets back to work so he doesn’t get fired, but his pulse stays quickened until he clocks out at the end of his shift. He doesn’t see that employee again for the rest of the night, either.

~

Minho was willing to let it go. He was willing to admit that maybe he just imagined it, the employee with the round cheeks and the red eyes. He was already tricking himself into thinking that this was a good job– what’s a hallucination tacked on top of that? Nothing. And what’s a grocery store night shift without some spooky ghost bullshit going on? Probably also nothing. He was all ready to deny it and block it out of his memory and continue on with his life.

Until he saw them again two nights later. 

There he was, in the greeting card aisle, picking up a fallen over display of Beanie Babies. There he was, nestling a nice puppy friend in between a tiger friend and kangaroo friend, giving each one of them a little pat on the head. There he was, feeling very impressed at himself for not wanting to quit yet even though he literally watched a customer knock over the display, look around to see if anyone saw, look Minho directly in the eyeballs, and then walk away like nothing happened. 

There he was, bending down to pick up a little lizard friend, when he glanced down the end of the aisle as he straightened up and saw them. 

He’s pretty sure it was them. The employee with the cute cheeks and the red eyes. It was just a second– just a second of him glancing up and seeing them standing there at the end of the aisle, employee name badge reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights, bright, blood red eyes showing through their bangs. They were just. Standing there. Looking at him. He swears.

He can’t prove it, of course; he glanced at them, then looked back to his work, then did a double-take and looked back up. When he did, they were gone. Minho is standing there in the aisle now, looking at the empty space at the end of it, the glass cases of the bakery section out of focus in his eyes. His fingers grip the little lizard friend plushie hard. What the fuck.

So he doesn’t get fired, Minho finishes cleaning up the display with his nerves crawling under his skin and making his fingers shake. Then, he heads over to the bakery section and peers behind the counter, looking for one of the employees.

He finds one; Kibum, sitting down against the back of the counter and eating a stale cinnamon roll. Minho feels slightly relieved that it’s him and not any of the other employees. He knows Kibum a little bit. They weren’t friends or anything, but they graduated from the same school last month.

“Hey,” he says, tapping the top of the counter to get Kibum’s attention. Kibum startles, looks up guiltily for a second, and then relaxes when he sees that it’s just Minho and not a manager.

“What?” he asks. He holds up a piece of cinnamon roll, offering it, but Minho shakes his head. He doesn’t feel up to eating right now with the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

“Have you seen–?” he starts, and then hesitates. Somehow he doesn’t think asking ‘have you seen a red-eyed teenager disappear lately?’ would be the best thing to say to get himself taken seriously. “Who’s that employee that just walked by here?” he asks instead. “Blond hair?” he adds. On the floor, Kibum frowns.

“I don’t know anyone blond here,” he says. Minho frowns back.

“They just walked by here?” he says, pointing. “Really long bangs, they look kind of young? Baby cheeks,” he says. Soft round cute baby cheeks under piercing dark red eyes.

“You think I pay any attention to any of the high school infants that work here?” Kibum says, scrunching his nose. “I’m an adult trying to get by, I don’t know every little teenage gremlin that signs up to work part-time.” he shakes his head dismissively; Minho stares blankly down at him. Is he. Serious?

“You are literally not even eighteen yet,” he says flatly. He might not be friends with Kibum but he knows that his birthday is in September. “and you graduated less than a month ago.”

“Fuck you, whatever, nobody asked,” Kibum snaps, cheeks turning pink. “I still have no idea who you’re talking about.” he makes flappy shooing motions with his hands. Minho obeys, humming with disapproval and also worry. The fact that Kibum doesn’t have any inkling whatsoever about a blond employee is. Incredibly upsetting to him.

Especially when, as he’s walking down to the stacks of soda boxes that he needs to tidy, he sees said blond employee come out of one of the store doors and disappear into the cereal aisle. When Minho takes the time to walk a few aisles further than the sodas to peek down that same aisle, he finds it empty.

And he doesn’t like that at all.

~

Minho can’t believe that he’s doing this. He cannot believe that he is taking his break– already borderline criminally short– and throwing it away in favor of investigating this cute cheeked soft lipped red-eyed employee. He cannot believe it.

And yet, here he is, walking himself grumpily to the security office door and then lifting his hand nervously to knock. He just. He has to know. He has to know if his brain is making them up or not. Once he knows that he’ll be able to deal with it.

It’ll be a very different kind of dealing with it depending on which way the answer swings, but he’s confident that he’ll still be able to deal with it. Therapy or a strongly-worded complaint to a manager. Both are equally terrifying to him, so it’s water off of a duck’s back either way.

The security door opens and Jonghyun is there, looking up at Minho with his strong jaw and sharp cheekbones and big brown eyes and–

Minho quickly looks down, rubbing the back of his neck. He has a mission here. He does not need to get gay distracted by the hot night shift security guard that’s too old for him anyway.

As if to exemplify Minho’s complete lack of a chance with Jonghyun, the security guard immediately coos, “Minho, my infant tiny child, hello, fetus baby, what’s up?”

And he really isn’t that much older, only 25, but he insists on calling Minho little baby names and acting like his mom. Apparently he does it to Kibum too. Minho hasn’t worked here long enough, but Kibum says that one time Jonghyun almost got into a shouting match with upper management because a customer was rude to Kibum and he didn’t deserve to be punished, so Minho guesses that he takes the mom thing seriously. It’s sweet, Minho guesses. In any case, it makes it real easy to ask for favors. 

“Hey,” he says, “can I check the security cameras real quick?” he asks. 

“Lose something?” Jonghyun asks. He tuts sympathetically and pushes the door open for there, heading to his rolly chair in front of his wall of security camera screens. He flicks a couple of beckoning fingers over his shoulder as he goes, so Minho follows, shuffling in nervously after him.

He’s never actually been in the security office before. It feels smaller than it is, and he can’t tell if the Sailor Moon and other superhero posters plastered over every inch of the walls make that better or worse. He also wonders if Jonghyun is even allowed to have put all of these posters up, but he knows that Jonghyun doesn’t care, so he doesn’t bother asking.

Instead, he leans on the desk in front of all of the screens and looks for the produce section. He knows for a fact that the mystery employee was there at least when Minho first went on his break a couple of minutes ago. They can’t have finished up their work already.

They can’t have, but when Minho finds the right screen, he doesn’t see them anywhere on it. He frowns, confused, about to ask Jonghyun if there are any blind spots in the camera, when he sees the big cart of sacks of potatoes that he saw the mystery employee pushing in earlier. If that’s there, then they have to be there, right? But they’re not.

“Where’s…?” he mumbles to himself, shifting closer to squint at the screen. He points at the cart of potatoes, and frowns at Jonghyun. “Someone was just here, right?” he asks. “An employee?”

Jonghyun sits forward a little to squint at the screen as well, then smiles and says, “Yeah. Taemin.” he drops his chin in his hand and smiles incredibly softly, hearts in his eyes as he watches the screen. “He’s my little demon baby,” he says. “Isn’t he so adorable? He doesn’t like to be on the cameras, though. He has a real knack for avoiding them. Probably steals stuff sometimes. Good for him.”

“Um– demon baby?” Minho asks. He tries to keep his voice blank, but he’s pretty sure that it shakes anyway. Demon baby.

He wants to tell himself that Jonghyun doesn’t mean, like, an actual demon, but also, he knows that Jonghyun believes in that shit. Like, for real believes in it. Like, for real, has had personal paranormal experiences multiple times before and claims to be able to see supernatural beings, believes in it. 

Which Minho should know, logically, in his logical brain, is all bullshit, but. A flash of red eyes spikes through his memory. So does Kibum’s voice telling him he has no idea who he was talking about.

“I’m surprised you’ve been able to see him at all, honestly,” Jonghyun is musing. His voice reaches Minho through his thoughts and Minho realizes with a start that he must have been talking for a while. Calmly, pleasantly, like they’re just talking about the weather, a sweet little bean smile on his mouth when Minho glances at him. ”He hardly ever lets other people see him. Not very social, you know.”

“Oh,” Minho says. His voice cracks on just that one single syllable. He feels it snap and scrape in his throat like something scratched him from the inside. Putting his hand to his neck, rubbing his thumb over his skin, swallowing thickly and trying not to let Jonghyun see his panic, he looks back at the screen.

There, standing in the produce section, next to the cart of potatoes, is the employee. Is Taemin.

Just. Standing there. Looking directly at the camera. Directly at Minho. 

The screen is in black and white, but Minho can still see the darkness of his eyes, the darker gray shade hiding that deep, blood red. Taemin’s eyes seem to hold Minho, so much that he can’t pay attention to anything else. Not Jonghyun next to him, not any of the other monitors, not Taemin’s cute cheeks or plush lips or pretty nose. Nothing but his dark red eyes.

A violent shiver runs down Minho’s spine.

And then the screen shuts off.

Minho steps back from the screen, his heart beating wildly in his throat. What the fuck. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. 

“Hmm?” Jonghyun hums, frowning at him. Then, following Minho’s gaze to the screens, he clucks his tongue and adds, “Oh, damn.”

He stands, shuffling around to the edge of the screens. He puts his knee on the desk and leans half of his body back between the monitors on the far side and the wall, mumbling, “The video import cable for that one is always–” his body jerks, he makes a little noise of effort, and the produce section screen turns back on.

Taemin isn’t there. Just the cart of potatoes.

“Fucky,” Jonghyun says as he wiggles himself back out. He brushes dust off of his shirt and smiles at Minho. “What did you need again?” he asks.

“Uh,” Minho says. He tears his eyes away from the produce section monitor and it’s very obvious lack of human occupants. “Nothing, that was it, thanks,” he says, and barely registers Jonghyun cooing kind uplifting compliments at him as he leaves the security office. 

He doesn’t know what the fuck to make of any of that, but he does at least know one thing. The fact that he still gets back out there and goes to work and somehow still doesn’t want to quit his job yet makes him very proud of himself. 

~

Minho isn’t a bootlicker. He knows that he shouldn’t trust his bosses. He knows that they’re not his friends. He knows that he is barely protected legally and the corporate demon that is the chain store that he works at will have better lawyers then whatever his family could pay for. He knows that they can and will fire him in a heartbeat if he displays any sort of weirdness or instability.

But also. He feels like. The instability he will show in trying to ask if maybe perhaps by some small chance possibly there is a seductive demon on the payroll is less than the instability that he will exhibit if and when he finally has a nervous breakdown if he keeps his mouth shut. The longer he doesn’t know why he seems to be inexplicably flustered and sweaty whenever he thinks about Taemin’s eyes on him the less time there is before he goes absolutely apeshit. The more his brain decides to slam him directly from “maybe Taemin is kind of cute” to whatever the fuck it’s doing now with the perfect image of Taemin’s sweaty hair in front of his scarlet eyes the less grip Minho feels like he has on himself. 

Ever since this started almost directly after that moment in the security room Minho has been an absolute disaster and it’s only a matter of time before he cracks on the surface and gets in trouble for it.

And besides. Jinki is young like him. 

Not like him. More like Jonghyun. A couple years older, Minho thinks.

Not the point. The point is. Minho thinks. That at the very least, Jinki is a millennial and not a boomer like all of the other bosses. He’s a millennial and he’s a POC and he’s disabled with his cool red and black walking stick and he’s probably queer? If Minho is reading his gaydar right? Which he isn’t sure, but mostly because he hasn’t been sure about anything in this store this week. But even still. Those other things are all very anti bootlicker. Which means that he’s the least likely to be an absolute dickhead if Minho goes and asks him about whether or not the hot boy currently organizing the soda bottles is in fact. An otherworldly entity.

These are all things that Minho tells himself over and over as he stands by his employee locker and pulls his jacket on. Jinki is sat at the break room table, picking his way through a packed lunch and scrolling through his phone. Not intimidating. Not approachable, exactly, but not intimidating, either.

He’s trying to figure out how exactly the best way to go about this is when he closes his locker. Whatever half-formed plan he had in his mind is ruined when Jinki looks up at the noise, sees him, and smiles.

“Oh, hey, I didn’t see you come in,” he says. “How’s your first week going?” he asks. “Getting the hang of things?”

And, see, like, he doesn’t say it like he’s a goblin trying to pretend like he can be Minho’s best friend. He says it like he’s just genuinely curious as to how Minho is adjusting to his new life as an expendable unit of labor. Minho doesn’t like how easy it is to like him, but he also can’t say that he’s not thankful for it. 

“I’m, um, okay, I guess,” he says. “figuring out my way around.” he smiles awkwardly; Jinki smiles comfortably back. Minho struggles internally for a moment, and then decides that there is no way he’s going to be able to do this delicately and if he wants to do it at all then he needs to just blurt it out right now. “Hey,” he starts, “you know that kid?” he asks. “Taemin?”

“Yeah,” Jinki says, nodding. “blond kid?”

“Yes!” Minho exclaims loudly. Probably too loudly. He tries to pull back his excitement as he asks, “You’ve, like, seen him? Around? Like he’s– real?”

He didn’t mean to say that. Well, no, he did mean to say that, but he shouldn’t have. He knows this because his brain immediately start screaming at him as soon as it leaves his mouth, and also because Jinkis friendly smile turns into a confused little frown, a puzzled tilt of his head, a mildly concerned scrunch between his eyebrows.

“Real?” he repeats.

“What’s up with his eyes?” Minho asks quickly, trying to cover up. He doesn’t expect it to work at all and is already thinking up ways to backpedal himself the fuck away from this conversation, but Jinki’s expression quickly changes once again. This time it’s raised eyebrows and wide eyes and a little gasp of realization, and then his chin propped up in his hand, lower lip jutted out in what could almost be called a pout.

“Oh, that,” he says, scrunching his nose. “Dude popped a bunch of blood vessels in his eyes about a week ago. I didn’t even know you could pop that many blood vessels that bad? But he said he didn’t really want to talk about it. It’s been getting better day by day, but still. Pretty gross, right? Poor kid.” he shakes his head sympathetically.

Minho doesn’t say anything in reply, even though he feels like he should to seem like a neurotypical human being. Popped blood vessels. He likes this theory much better than the whole succubus situation. The only problem is he can’t convince himself that Jinki is correct and Jonghyun was joking and Kibum is just that unobservant.

The problem is that to fully put himself at ease he thinks he’s really going to have to find Taemin and talk to him and ask about it himself.

The concept of that looming ahead in his future runs cold in his veins, but at least it still doesn’t make him want to quit. At least he has that going for him.

~

Minho wouldn’t call himself a coward, but he’s pretty sure that anyone watching his actions today would. He’s chickened out on talking to Taemin 3 times today. Once before he even clocked in, when he was walking to the back of the store and passed an aisle with Taemin in it. Minho had stopped, looking in, watching him restocking boxes of crackers and trying to work up his courage.

Then Taemin had looked up at him with those dark red eyes and all of Minho’s courage left him. His courage left him and a thick tingling arrived in him, buzzing under his skin, rushing through his veins. He scuttled away before anything else happened to go clock in and get ready, fanning his face and trying to blink away the image of those hooded eyes and those thick lips and that sharp jaw. When he came out again and passed that same aisle, the supply cart was still there but Taemin was nowhere to be seen.

The next time was in the bathroom, when he went in there to pee and turned the corner and came face-to-face with Taemin.

If he’s being honest, he doesn’t really remember a lot of that one, because the shock of it had him nearly jumping out of his skin and he’s pretty sure that he dissociated for a moment and kind of just floated there in the darkness until he came back to himself. By that point, Taemin was already gone. Did he teleport? Did he steal Minho’s soul for a minute? Did he just walk out of the bathroom? Who the fuck knows. Not Minho, that’s for sure. 

The third time is right now, when he’s again in the back behind the dairy section, grabbing all of the yogurts that have reached their sell-by date and trying to figure out if there’s a way to sneak them out without getting fired so he doesn’t have to throw them away. Taemin passed him a while ago, just like the first time, mumbling “Excuse me” in that quiet, husky voice, red eyes flashing behind his bangs, disappearing into the darkness after Minho let him pass. 

Currently Minho is trying to convince himself to follow him. Logically, he can’t have disappeared. Logically, if Minho walks down the way Taemin just went, he’ll run into him again. Logically, if Taemin really had disappeared, Minho wouldn’t still be smelling him, his perfume, his sweat, musky and heavy in his nose, fogging up his brain, sending signals down to his–

Logically, Minho needs to go follow him and confront him about this because if he’s been getting boners for the past couple of days about this kid and he _isn’t_ a demon then Minho is going to have several fucking problems with _himself._

It’s that thought that drags him away from his yogurts and sends him down the narrow hallway.

His courage starts to leave him again as he realizes it’s just him alone in the darkness with his footsteps and what may or may not be a demon waiting for him at the end. Thankfully– maybe?– before he has time to reconsider and turn around, he comes to the end and finds Taemin.

Just sitting there. On the floor. Behind all of the butters. Back against the wall. A can of what Minho can only assume is stolen whipped cream in his hand, nozzle in his mouth as he stares frozen up at Minho with those dark red eyes. 

Though from this close, they do seem less solid red. A little blotchy, some whites showing through. Maybe Jinki was right.

Taemin recovers first, lowering his can and leaning his head back against the wall. He regards Minho silently, almost haughtily, Minho would say, though maybe that’s because the set of his jaw and the lazy hood of his eyelids just gives off that impression. That impression that Taemin is above Minho, and that he could do whatever he wants with him, and that he could step–

“Yeah?” Taemin asks. Thankfully it brings Minho out of his train of thought. Now he has to think of something else to say, though, which is problematic. Especially because of how his voice sounded, the annoyed snap of it, so deep, husky, almost rough, out of those soft, soft lips. Minho licks his own lips and tries not to be completely audible when he swallows.

“Can I,” he says, and his voice breaks, just like the other day, catches hard and rough in his throat. He coughs, clears his throat. His hand comes up to cover it almost instinctively, like his body is trying to protect itself without his brain entirely knowing why. “Tell me something?” he asks. 

Taemin’s eyes look him over, flick down and up in a quick once-over. Then they narrow, just a little bit, just so that they’re suspicious red slits half-hidden behind his bangs, and that simple movement is. So powerful. That Minho feels it in his whole body.

A whole body shudder, a quickening of his heartbeat, a flash of heat under every inch of his skin. It’s so sudden and so intense that Minho almost loses his balance for a second, reaching out for the wall to steady himself. What’s worse is that he doesn’t know if Taemin did that to him with his demon powers or with his human powers or if Minho is horny or if he’s just really scared or if either of those things are even as unrelated as he thinks they should be. 

“About what?” Taemin asks, mouth a curled scowl. Minho distinctly remembers Jinki saying that Taemin didn’t want to talk about his eyes, but he pushes that memory away. If Taemin is a demon then he can just eat Minho for being annoying and if he’s a human then what’s he going to do? Beat Minho up with his scrawny teenager arms? Unlikely. 

And for all of the confidence in that thought, Minho’s voice shakes when he says, “You, um. Your um. Jinki said, um. Your um.” he lifts one hand to tap his fingers on his cheek just under his eye. “Your– blood vessels?” he squeaks. “How did. How did you. What– what hap–”

“Pooped too hard.”

The words hit him like a punch to the stomach.

Minho looks down at Taemin. Taemin looks up at him.

The silence rings between them like a gunshot. 

“Excuse m–”

“You heard me.”

Minho. Sure did. He sure did hear. Taemin. Taemin said words out of his mouth and Minho heard them in his ears. That definitely is what happened.

Taemin doesn’t say anything else for Minho to hear. He doesn’t tell Minho to leave, but Minho turns around and walks away anyway.

As he goes, he hears the spray of the whipped cream nozzle recede into the distance. He makes it all the way back to his cart of yogurts and just stands there, looking at them. 

He wants to quit.

**Author's Note:**

> #was Taemin doing whippets in the back??? Another unanswered question : ) #this is like one of the most Gremliny things I've ever written I promise I have a real 2 Min to post eventually #unsurprisingly my favorite part in this is jonghyun #probably steals stuff sometimes good for him #now that's a security guard I can trust #ydw #taemin's eyes go back to normal and then him and Minho have the most awkward employee relationship on the planet #because like how are you supposed to be like hey I know I thought you were a demon for a week and then you told me pooped too hard but I kind of have a crush on you #he is just horny and suffering from afar


End file.
